Gold and Purple
by DarkPoisonousLove
Summary: Griffin has a gift-tears of gold and roses blooming on her lips-that draws the attention of the Dragon King and he wants to marry her. She's not exactly willing to give herself to the man whose obsession with gold is destroying the land, but that is the least of her problems when a person she trusts stirs the flow of things in an attempt to drown her. Fairytale AU plus Soulmates.


**A/N: This was inspired by a Bulgarian folk tale called "The Girl on Whose Lips Bloomed Roses" (which is about one of the two details I kept from it). I really like that tale and I hope you'll like my retelling of it in an AU of Winx Club. (Also, if it seems dark, know that this version is actually lighter than the original).**

**I tried to make it sound the way folk tales sound in Bulgarian and I think I succeeded (more or less, considering I am operating with a completely different set of words). **

Once upon a time there was a woman named Griffin. Her eyes were golden in color and when she cried, drops of pure gold fell from them instead of tears. Her hair was purple and when she smiled, roses in the same shade bloomed on her lips. She gathered them and sold them to the nobles traveling through her village and with the money she looked after her two sisters and helped the other villagers.

Their land was dying under the rule of the Dragon King who only cared about fulfilling his needs. He was said to be a descendant of a dragon and hoarded gold like it was the only thing on his mind, like he was obsessed, and he didn't care his people were dying out all over the land, scorched by his greed like he'd drained all the water out of it. And flowers could hardly bloom in the desert.

Griffin's roses kept blooming on her lips every time she looked at her two sisters, though. Even if the memories of their parents who'd died an untimely death, leaving them mourning and alone, threatened to leak out of her eyes the moment the thought surfaced in her mind. She never let her sisters see her cry, though, and only did so when they'd gone to bed and she went out to admire the stars on the night sky that didn't burn with their light like the sun of their kingdom did. She let them flow like her hair was falling over her back and down to her ankles and then gathered them to sell them the next day. And as long as she had her sisters and the stars, she knew she would be okay and she'd have enough to take care of what was dear to her.

The king learned about the roses and the golden drops all of his court was parading with, though, and instantly desired to see her and if her gift turned out to be true, he wanted to marry her. He sent word to the village, announcing the arrival of his three younger sisters who were supposed to make sure she wasn't a fraud. With their hearts of ice and storm, and opaque darkness, the young princesses were feared by all across the kingdom and outside its borders. They were their brother's trusted conquerors and he knew there was no one better to send to bring his future wife to him.

The news lay heavily on Griffin's heart as she didn't want to leave her sisters behind even for a second, and especially not when it was him she was being brought to. The two of them convinced her to give it a chance, though, since her gift was strong enough to feed even the hunger for gold of the king and could save their whole land. She agreed then but it was still hard to accept her fate. She'd wanted to travel the world and use the stars to navigate, study different herbs and find a cure for the plague that had taken her parents away, not become a prisoner of the king in the Tower of Fire. And she had no doubt that he would never let go of her and she would suffocate in his embrace. But for her sisters and her land she would give up every last piece of her heart.

Her friend noticed her low spirits and offered that they go to the stream near the village where she could clear her head. Moving water was always of help when trying to let go of negative emotions. Griffin agreed, not knowing that her friend's intentions were anything but pure.

They went to the stream where Griffin couldn't see her reflection but she didn't really need to. She knew what she looked like. With her purple hair and eyes of gold, she was like nothing anyone had seen before. She was different and she didn't know why. She only knew that was the only thing that allowed her to take care of her sisters and that was enough for her. As always, a rose bloomed on her lips at the thought of them, but she didn't get the chance to take it out of her mouth.

The current sped up, driven by the spell of her friend who secretly practiced witchcraft. She'd reached to the depths of her soul that was darker than her black hair and harbored envy enough to drown three kingdoms worth of dragons and used her emotions to connect to the darkness lying in the bed of the stream, stirring it up and causing it to grab Griffin and drag her deep into the water where the sun couldn't reach and bury her in the eternal blackness resting there.

The woman then returned to the village where she told her lying tale of terror about Griffin's death. The whole village mourned the loss of their protector, and Griffin's sisters cried so hard that parts of their souls shed away and out of their eyes, charring the ground and leaving them into monsters that disappeared into the forest to cry their pain to the herbs Griffin had used to gather at dawn when she said they had most power as charged by the first rays of the sun. That was the only connection they had left to their sister. Even if it wasn't enough to get her back.

Griffin didn't drown, though. The current dragged her to the bottom of the river but the blossom on her mouth didn't allow any water to get past it and invade her lungs. Her life force kept the roses alive inside her and now they were returning the favor, keeping her alive in the water.

The current kept tossing her around, still controlled by the spell aimed to take her life. It wouldn't let go until she was dead. It carried her far away, through mountains and plains, and different kingdoms, until finally, one day, her hair tangled into the branches of a willow that had bent over the water as if weeping.

She remained there, the water furiously pushing and tugging at her and trying to drag her back down to the depths and drown her, but the willow didn't break under the destructive force of the current, as if powered by the connection of the tears that lay in both their cores.

A woman found her there and pulled her out of the water in her frantic panic to save her life. The rose fell off of Griffin's mouth the moment she was safe in the woman's hands and her lungs filled with air again, letting her wake up. She was alive but she'd lost her sight, her eyes wrapped in the merged darkness of the river and her friend's soul. The light of her golden eyes was lost and she couldn't cry no matter how much she wanted to.

The kind woman who was named Faragonda took her in and brought her to the home she shared with her brother Saladin. Their hospitality touched Griffin but, again, she couldn't cry. Not even when Faragonda told her she was in the kingdom of Alfea – a place she'd never heard of before. She'd studied the lands that surrounded her kingdom and the Tower of Fire, and she'd studied the lands that surrounded those lands, she'd exchanged her tears for maps from far away places with travelers, but she'd never heard of the kingdom of Alfea. And all her hope of finding her way home hardened and died in her chest when even the sorrow of being so far away from her sisters didn't bring her tears out. She was blind and she didn't have her tears to trade for essentials. She didn't have the funds to find her way back home.

Faragonda and Saladin kept taking care of her, sharing their food and roof with her even when she was just a burden that they didn't have to take on. They both said they'd never abandon her and even helped her establish herself as the village's healer. Without her sight, she could smell scents even better than before and she could tell herbs apart without even seeing them. Faragonda was her eyes when they went out to the forest to look for herbs and Saladin helped with the gathering and deliveries. And she built a new life along with them. But the tears never returned and neither did the roses as she couldn't find it in herself to smile, knowing she would never see her sisters again, she would never get to hold them because she couldn't reach them.

She couldn't even see the passage of time for herself since night did not differ from day to her anymore, the sun and moon, and the stars were lost to her, too. And it was only Faragonda and Saladin's support and friendship that made sure the darkness still in her eyes couldn't get its job done and kill her. They were her life now that the roses were gone and the tenderness and kindness they treated her with didn't allow her heart to turn to stone.

She kept helping the people of the village even when she couldn't help herself and asked them about information about her old kingdom. She was afraid of what had happened to the land after she'd disappeared. Their king had not been known for mercy and she didn't know what he'd done after he hadn't gotten what he'd wanted. She just hoped her fate hadn't doomed more people to suffering.

None of the people she healed had the answers to rest her heart, though. Very few of them had even heard of the Tower of Fire and only from old legends saying it'd been built from magic that had turned into tangible matter and it was the last known domain of the magic that had been lost. Rumors of practicing witches were going around but nobody believed them. Except Griffin who'd lived through that nightmare and still had her fate controlled by the magic she could feel in her eyes, making her want to carve them out, Faragonda's warm hand on her shoulder and her hopeful words in her ears the only thing keeping her from mutilating herself. Not that it was of any use.

It was her seventeenth month in Faragonda and Saladin's cottage when she had a traveler brought in to heal. The moment she entered the room, she felt a familiar pull. It was the same plague that had taken her parents, and she knew there was nothing she could do about that. It was a disease of the soul and sucked it out of you until you didn't have enough left to live. The traveler did bring her news of her kingdom, though. There were two monsters on the loose that the king couldn't deal with no matter how many times he sent his sisters after them. It had been the monsters who'd infected the traveler with the plague when he'd ran into them unsuspectingly. They didn't spare anyone and people were afraid to go out of their homes, even if it was well known that the monsters never left the forest. They hid there and guarded the forest herbs so that no one would dare pick them. The three princesses were safe because they rode on monsters themselves but they still couldn't catch the two creatures that no one knew how to deal with or where they'd come from.

The man died in her hands as if to confirm how dire the situation was. But Griffin still felt a spark of happiness to have news of her home, especially when she was told her disappearance hadn't wrecked the kingdom with the king's rage. He seemed to finally take interest in his people and their well-being and she felt a small smile pull at her lips even if she knew she would never marry him so it didn't matter whether she could love him or not.

A rose fell from her lips, a small one, just a bud that haven't even bloomed at all yet, and Faragonda told her it was pale violet instead of the purple of her hair, but it still gave her hope that she could get her roses back, that she could find some reason to smile again.

She sent Faragonda to sell the rose at the village market, and the money they used to buy a kind of tea that couldn't be found in these lands, only at the corner of the world Griffin came from. It had been her favorite and she hoped it would help her reconnect with home and not crush what little joy she'd managed to find when the memories of her lost family inevitably filled her mind.

When the moon was full–Griffin still kept track of that since it was important for some healing practices, even if she had to use Faragonda's sight to do it and it broke her heart–she asked Faragonda to take her out to a close by clearing in the woods to connect with the stars again. If she'd felt the traveler's illness, then perhaps she could feel the light of the night sky as well.

The moment they stepped out of the shadows of the trees, she felt the light of the moon on her skin, seeping deep into her bones and filling her with shiny happiness that she'd never thought she'd feel again. It overflowed from her eyes, making tears fall down her cheeks, but those were water and not gold. She marveled at the unfamiliar feeling on her skin but didn't reach to wipe them away, still in awe by the sensation she'd never felt before.

The moonlight gathered in her tears and they turned into tiny lakes of light, shining radiantly and obliterating the darkness in her eyes to leave only the gold beneath. She looked at Faragonda and saw her friend for the first time. She hadn't been blinded by the reflected light since her own soul was made of light and Griffin hugged her, feeling the tears draining from her skin.

Flapping of wings and screeching startled them apart. They found three big creatures in the sky flying towards them. And even though Griffin had never seen them, she recognized the steeds of the three sisters of the Dragon King. She'd heard many stories about the royal family experimenting on animals, trying to draw out the dragon essence from their own flesh and give rebirth to the race of dragons. They were said to have failed in their mission every time but they'd created unseen beasts that the three sisters controlled and rode on during their conquests.

The monsters landed in front of them and she would take the time to look at the princesses but her attention was drawn by the man who jumped off the back of one of the monsters and quickly crossed the distance between them. He had ice blue eyes–much like his sister that he'd been riding with–and wore her violet rosebud strapped to the lapel of his coat. It was him – the Dragon King. Valtor.

"Purple hair and eyes of gold," he murmured as his eyes took her in, reaching a place deep inside her soul, and he stepped closer. "It's you, isn't it?" He ran his fingers over her cheek and the heat of his skin pulled tears out of her eyes that seemed to cool him off as his flesh soaked them up. And she felt a calm wash over her that she'd never felt before because it was her, the other part of their shared soul.

It was the wholeness of soulmates as they balanced each other out now that they'd finally met. Fire and water. Elements of magic. It wasn't dead. It just wasn't what everyone thought. It lived inside people and Griffin had had it ever since she'd been born. It fed on emotions and her will for life had made the roses inside her bloom and her hair grow long, reaching to hold her into the world even when she'd felt like giving up. And her desire to take care of her sisters had turned the sorrow in her heart into tears of gold. Valtor's touch brought out her pure essence, though, since he was her soulmate and her opposite, and so the tears were of water. It was what she was woven from, just like he was made of fire. The rose had reached him and he'd set out to find her, the moonlight mirrored by her tears like a lighthouse in the darkness of the night.

Valtor wrapped his arms around her and from his back sprouted dragon wings. Much like her tears of water, the dragon wings were part of his purest essence that he could only reach when Griffin was around. They flew into the night sky and back to their kingdom, reaching the two monsters in the forest just at the break of dawn.

Griffin recognized her sisters when she saw them and they wept when Valtor returned her to them. Their souls pieced back together and the tears that fell from their eyes turned into a herb charged with the energy of the rising sun while they turned back into humans. The new plant had magical powers that allowed it to heal the plague of the soul that had taken their parents away when they'd tried to protect them from it. It had come from Griffin's friend whose own broken soul had sought to swallow theirs and so their mother and father had sacrificed their own to save them. And her sisters' souls had shattered apart when they'd thought her dead so they'd become a home to the plague as well, infecting everyone they met in their despair to feel whole again.

Griffin and Valtor paid a visit to Zatura as well whose magical tricks couldn't work against them when the magic was woven in their souls and she was just stealing it from the essence of everything around. Valtor's heat reached inside her and drained all the water from her body, leaving her all dried up and dead just like she'd been on the inside from the start.

His heat couldn't hurt Griffin who took his hand and pulled him back into the calming depths of her soul. The fires had burned into him, driving him to want obsessively, and gold was the one thing that had always calmed him down. And when he looked into her eyes, he finally knew why that had been.

And this fairytale has no end just like their souls are tangled into eternity.

**Ediltrude and Zarathustra are Griffin's sisters (in case it's not clear), the Trix are Valtor's sisters, and Zatura is the "friend".**


End file.
